Ørsted Builds US Offshore Wind Powerhouse

Danish offshore wind developer Ørsted has entered into an agreement with the D.E. Shaw Group to acquire a 100% equity interest in Rhode Island-based Deepwater Wind at a purchase price of USD 510 million.

Jointly, the two developers have a US offshore wind portfolio of projects of around 8.8GW. The acquisition will create a ”leading US offshore wind platform with the most comprehensive geographic coverage and the largest pipeline of development capacity”, Ørsted said.

After closing of the transaction, the name of the new organization will be Ørsted US Offshore Wind.

The new organization will be represented by a local management team headed by Ørsted US Offshore Wind CEO Thomas Brostrøm, Co-CEO Jeff Grybowski, President and CFO David Hang both from the Deepwater Wind team, and COO Claus Bøjle Møller from the Ørsted team.

The transaction is subject to clearance by the US competition authorities and is expected to close by end of 2018.

According to Ørsted, Deepwater Wind has an attractive and geographically diverse portfolio of projects along the US East Coast with a total potential capacity of around 3.3GW.

The projects include the 30MW Block Island Wind Farm, the only operational offshore wind farm in the US, three offshore wind development projects in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland and New York totaling 810MW of capacity with long-term revenue contracts in place or pending finalization, and approximately 2.5GW of offshore wind development potential across three BOEM lease areas in Massachusetts and Delaware. Of these 2.5GW, 1.2GW is developed through an equal joint venture with PSEG, a New Jersey utility.

Thomas Brostrøm, CEO of Ørsted US Offshore Wind and President of Ørsted North America, said: “Deepwater Wind has done a fantastic job as a first-mover in US offshore wind, and I look forward to joining and integrating the two US organizations. We have exciting times ahead of us delivering large-scale clean energy projects to households and businesses along the Eastern Seaboard. Ørsted will maintain a strong presence in Massachusetts and Rhode Island and will, of course honor the local commitments associated with Deepwater Wind’s projects along the East Coast.”

Ørsted’s currently has development rights for up to 2GW at the Bay State Wind site off the coast of Massachusetts owned in a joint venture with Eversource, and development rights for up to 3.5GW at the Ocean Wind site off the coast of New Jersey.

In Virginia, Ørsted will be constructing two 6MW wind turbine positions for phase one of Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project. The company has exclusive rights with Dominion Energy to discuss the potential development of up to 2GW of offshore wind capacity.

Martin Neubert, CEO of Offshore Wind at Ørsted, said: ”With this transaction we’re creating the number one offshore wind platform in North America, merging the best of two worlds: Deepwater Wind’s longstanding expertise in originating, developing and permitting offshore wind projects in the US, and Ørsted’s unparalleled track-record in engineering, constructing, and operating large-scale offshore wind farms. ”